Displacement economies in Africa

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About the editor

Amanda Hammar is research professor at the Centre of African Studies, Copen hagen University. She has researched and published on agrarian change, local government, statemaking, sovereignty, displacement and crisis in southern Africa, with a special focus on Zimbabwe and, less so, on Mozambique. She coedited Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Weaver Press, 2003) and two journal special issues related to political economies of displacement in southern Africa (Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 2008; Journal of Southern African Studies, 2010). Her current work is focused on changing modes of urban governance and citizenship in times of crisis and displacement.

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Displacement economies in Africa

Paradoxes of crisis and creativity

edited by Amanda Hammar

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Figure and tables

Figure

9.1 Fear of being mugged, attacked, raped, shot or harassed by LRA, by district in per cent by adult population . . . 191 Tables

9.1 How many kilometres people could move outside the camps, by

percentage of the adult population . . . 192 9.2 Number of households in each Selection Area as percentage of Selection

Areas . . . 193 9.3 Humanitarian assistance received by percentage of households. . . . 196 9.4 Use of food aid by district and by percentage of those who received

food aid . . . 197 9.5 Access to land for cultivation adjacent to the camp, percentage of

households . . . 198 9.6 The use of cultivation land – percentage of households with cultivation

land adjacent . . . 198 9.7 Preceding month’s income by those who had engaged in economic

activities in the previous year, by percentage of adult population . . . 199 9.8 Households with victims of crime or violent encounter during the

month prior to interview, by percentage of households . . . 201

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Introduction

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1 | Displacement economies: paradoxes of crisis and creativity in Africa

¹

Amanda Hammar

An insistent presence

Finding a name for something that is viscerally ‘there’ but is still undefined provokes a creative frustration. This something ‘insists upon its presence’ as a problematic (Thompson 1978, cited in Guyer 2002: ix), prompting a productive search for analytical terms with which to counter this absence in a meaningful way. This is a search often enriched by a collective rather than an individual endeavour. Such creative frustration occurred in the 2000s during my engage

ment with contexts of violent crisis and displacement and their continuities in southern Africa, and specifically in Zimbabwe. Through this, what came to light repeatedly were the paradoxes of displacement: openings occurring as well as closures; dislocation and movement at the same time as confinement and ‘stuckness’; creation as well as destruction; wealth accumulation alongside impoverishment. Inevitably, these are experienced unevenly by those affected by or effecting forms of displacement. What seemed increasingly evident, however, was not only that there were complex historical and contemporary conditions that generated displacement in its various manifestations: that is, oneoff acts of mass dislocation, for example, or longerterm, cumulative forms of chronic dislodging. In addition, one could observe the emergence of, and articulation between, a range of new physical, social, economic and political spaces, relations, systems and practices that displacement itself was producing.

Witnessing these compelling paradoxes of displacement, there seemed to be no existing conceptual framework or language at the time with which to investigate and make sense of their curious simultaneities, their multiactor, multisited and multitemporal dimensions, and their complex relational manifestations and implications. Even if there were some promising leads to pursue, there was no single theoretical approach or disciplinary perspective or field of study that was encompassing enough on its own. The rich literatures related to refugee studies, for example, with few exceptions, were barely pay

ing attention to questions of political economy and the shifting economic dynamics that displacement was linked to. The focus of migration studies of various shades, while certainly inclusive of various economic perspectives, was not concerned with the enforced, violent dimensions of movement which are

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core aspects of displacement. And the growing scholarship on shadow or war economies on the one hand and underground or informal economies on the other, while relevant on many levels, did not have a focus on displacement as such at their centre. So even while all these continue to be resonant and inspiring fields of knowledge, each in themselves has been unable to grasp what was emerging but was as yet unnamed.

It was this frustration which prompted a search for more appropriate ways of thinking and speaking about displacement. This volume is one of the col

lective outcomes of that ongoing search, itself merely a starting point rather than an endpoint in this enterprise. This introductory chapter aims to unfold key steps in the journey thus far which have led to the development of an approach to (not a theory of) displacement that focuses on the relational qualities and the paradoxes of displacement in general, and on both what produces displacement and what it in turn produces. This approach has been applied in this volume to what we call here displacement economies, entailing theoretical and analytical engagement with a selection of empirically situated displacement contexts.

Importantly, the focus on displacement economies does not simply concern classic notions of ‘the economy’ as such, or simply ‘economic’ elements. The ap

proach developed within this volume – often combining various political economy and cultural politics sensibilities – engages with a series of dynamic questions that cut across sociocultural, political and economic spheres.² These questions, not all of which are addressed equally or directly in this collection, include the following: How does the value (commodification and consumption) of things, bodies, spaces, natural resources and even money itself change (or continue) in times of severe and sustained crisis and displacement, and with what effects? Under such conditions, how do the spaces, forms and dynamics of production alter, and with what effects? What new forms and dynamics of accumulation, distribution and exchange emerge under such conditions, and with what effects? How do notions and experiences of time change and, in so doing, affect economic and social practices? How do both formal and informal economies and the articulations between them – contested as their distinctions or boundaries are – get altered in such times, and with what effects? Additional related questions arise such as: How do social relations as well as forms and sites of social reproduction get reshaped in contexts of crisis and displacement?

And how do political spaces and practices in such contexts generate, and also get altered by, changes in economic dynamics?

Conceptualizing displacement

Displacement – read broadly as constituting an act, experience and/or effect of some form of forced dislocation, or confinement – is as old and continuous as human history. When have there not been periods or places

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1 | Hammar marked by violent conquest or occupation; enclosure or enslavement, dis

possession, removal or forced resettlement, with their profound individual as well as collective material and symbolic effects? Albeit with a much shorter provenance, displacement as a concept or object of study³ also has a history, while a quite different if related intellectual and practical history has evolved concerning intervention in displacement contexts. This section discusses the ways in which ‘displacement’ evolved initially as an operational concept within a postSecond World War global humanitarian framework. It then moves on to discuss displacement as a relational concept, which is what underpins the approach in this volume.

Displacement as an operational concept Displacement – often also termed forced displacement or forced migration – developed as an operational concept most notably in the aftermath of the Second World War. It became prevalent within international humanitarian circles concerned with mass dislocations precipitated by the war. The first formal instrument put in place to address this phenomenon was the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, later supplemented by the 1967 Protocol. The Convention defines a refugee as follows:

A person who owing to a wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwill

ing to return to it …⁴

The focus specifically on refugeehood to the exclusion of other dimen

sions of displacement laid the basis for conceptualizing and responding to displacement institutionally, primarily and rather narrowly in terms of an international legal predicament, reflecting certain anxieties about international bordercrossing.⁵ Furthermore, it privileged and prioritized refugees as a cat

egory of forced migrant that was to make invisible a much wider range of others affected by, and implicated in, processes of displacement. For example, it excluded recognition of forms of physical dislocation or forced (re)settlement generated not by wars or persecution but primarily by the politicaleconomic interests and projects of states or private corporations. In 1969 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) added an external dimension to the primarily internal threats identified in the UN Convention, reflecting continental realities and the anticolonial, nationalist politics of the times.⁶ The OAU resolved that the term ‘refugee’, besides encompassing the Convention definition, should ‘also apply to every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign

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domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality’, was forced to ‘seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality’ (emphasis added).⁷ In addition, while the 1951 Convention recognized the right of refugees to return to their places of origin, the OAU explicitly stressed that repatriation had to be voluntary.

A related but rather different institutional regime came into play some three decades later with respect to the formal recognition of those dislocated and relocated within their own borders. They would eventually come to be labelled internally displaced persons (IDPs). Historically, the empirical reality of internal displacement had been widespread in many contexts. In some cases it was prompted by violent internal social conflicts such as civil wars.

In others, it resulted from politically and/or economically driven state projects of ‘development’ or ‘modernization’ (Scott 1998). Often these entailed mass forced removals and resettlement, as with the creation of the ‘homelands’ in apartheid South Africa (Platzky and Walker 1985) or through largescale dam development (Colson 1971; Roy 1999; OliverSmith 2010). In such situations those subjected to such violent dislocation were not classified in any institutionally standardized way. It was only in 1998 that the United Nations developed its Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, in which IDPs were described as:

persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or humanmade disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised State border.⁸

The IDP framework drew more broadly from international human rights norms and standards than from the established refugee paradigm. Linked to this in part, the international legal status of IDPs, and the instruments avail

able to advocates, governments and international organizations to address internal displacement, have evolved quite differently – and less forcefully, one might suggest – from those developed for refugees. Certainly, the emergence of a more formalized ‘IDP regime’ has made the overall phenomenon more visible and generated more serious attention. However, it has tended towards homogenizing the ways in which displacement within states is recognized and addressed, especially in operational terms, much as has been so within the refugee regime. Increasingly in the past few decades, large multinational institutions like the World Bank have recognized (internal) displacement as a key effect of development programmes and projects – including some of their own – and developed measures to address, compensate for or preempt these (Christensen and Harild 2009: 4).⁹ Yet, as with the older refugee focus, certain globaltechnocratic discourses have tended to dominate the operational framing

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1 | Hammar of displacement as a whole (even while critical scholarship has challenged this:

see, for example, Turton 2003; Bakewell 2008). Focusing on typologies of causes, and forms of physical dislocation or removal, relocation and resettlement, an entire humanitarian regime has come into being aimed at protecting or assisting those categorized within this framework (HarrellBond 1986).

International but also national institutions, laws, labels and procedures have helped to define, identify and validate who, what and where are included within the operational field of displacement. The emphasis on population rather than process has contributed to this limited and limiting perspective (Lubkemann 2010). Terms like refugee, IDP (internally displaced person), asy

lum seeker or returnee are among the most common and familiar labels in the dominant lexicon. This corresponds with the excessive focus on formally recognized spaces and experiences of physical dislocation – which are often linked simultaneously to, or become themselves, places of confinement. This includes refugee camps or IDP camps, asylum or detention centres, or resettle

ment areas. People’s internment within formal camps is commonly justified as being for their own ‘protection’. At the same time it involves measures to contain – or constrain – the displaced within given boundaries that seemingly separate them from those threatening them or from other legally emplaced or entitled citizens (Bøås and Bjørkhaug, this volume).

There is continued emphasis, operationally, on those documented and en

camped. This is despite the fact that selfsettled displacees in both rural and increasingly urban areas constitute a substantial majority of forced migrants (Raeymaekers, this volume). Their presence in these new and often already pressured spaces has significant effects both for themselves and for the physi

cal, social, economic and political environments into which they have moved.

More generally, the persistent and rather static focus in operational con

texts on the formally displaced – who are primarily viewed through a lens of

‘victimhood’, ‘protection’ and ‘management’ – tends to leave other actors and dynamics still largely unseen and unnamed. Yet as noted by Lubkemann (2010) and Polzer and Hammond (2008), there has been a growing scholarship in recent years critiquing various invisibilities created by such a framework, and attending to more complex and layered dynamics among displaced communi

ties, camped or uncamped. This has brought greater attention to, for example, selfsettlement in various contexts (Malkki 1995; Bascom 1998; Bakewell 2000;

Raeymaekers, this volume); to internally displaced persons more generally (Dubernet 2001; Murray 2005; Bøås and Bjørkhaug, this volume), and to the density of difference and politics inside camps themselves (Turner 2010). It has highlighted those involuntarily immobilized or displacedinplace (Lubkemann 2008a; Magaramombe 2010; Jones 2010 and this volume), as well as exploring the effects of displacement on host communities (Gebre 2003; Rodgers 2008;

Evans, Rodrigues, and Raeymaekers, this volume). More attention has been

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given to refugee women, especially in urban settings (Roque 2008; Abusharaf 2009, Elliott, this volume), and also to the relationship between religion and displacement (Lauterbach 2014), as well as to the diversity and dynamics of new and expanding diasporas (Koser 2003; McGregor and Primorac 2010; Hansen, this volume). And there has been a growing focus too on the relationship between displacement and statemaking (Hammar 2008; Landau and Monson 2008).

The displacement economies approach pushes the boundaries of the above

mentioned perspectives, extending well beyond the refugee and/or IDP arenas and humanitarian orientation more generally. It includes but moves beyond established insights into those directly if differentially dislocated. Through its specific focus on the paradoxically productive dynamics of displacement, it brings attention in new ways to people more indirectly affected by displacement, such as those left behind or confined, as well as those hosting displacees, be they familiar or unfamiliar, family members or strangers, officially recognized or not. It also considers the complex and shifting political economies under

pinning or sustaining displacement, which might include the interests of central states, municipalities, military, rebel movements, private companies or development agencies, either alone or in alliance with one another. Addition

ally, the approach takes into account those benefiting directly or indirectly from displacement and how they affect both informal and formal economies.

This may include political parties, state agents, new and old entrepreneurs and investors, new and old gatekeepers or brokers, as well as those among the displaced who might, in fact, find ways to benefit differentially from the condition of displacement. Finally, it is interested in locating the interests and effects of those ‘managing’ the displaced, such as state agencies, donor agencies, nongovernmental organizations, church organizations, border agen

cies, and so on.

The approach furthermore moves beyond the usual system of often de

historicized, oversimplified and often policyoriented categorizing of types of displacement and ‘the displaced’, reinforced by popular and iconic media images and narratives.¹⁰ Together, such labels, narratives and images have naturalized the association between displacement and violence, emergency, chaos, loss and victimhood. In addition, they often imply absolute vulnerability and passivity of the displaced, reinforced by an implied gratitude for being helped or saved. All this fuels the largely unquestioned, normative humanitar

ian discourses and systems established to ‘manage’ the misplaced, with all the largescale human, legal, political, structural and environmental challenges this implies. Such hegemonic representations of displacement are not ‘untrue’ or inaccurate in their totality. However, they clearly reflect only a partial perspec

tive of what displacement can and does entail in terms of enforced material, spatial, social and symbolic changes. They systematically leave out the full

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1 | Hammar range of relevant people and processes involved, as well as the diverse effects displacement produces. In doing so, as already suggested, they leave much and many hidden or unnoticed.¹¹Such analytical blind spots generate (contra

dictory) politicaladministrative regimes of recognition of place, personhood and practices. These in turn (re)produce logics of belonging, entitlement and exclusion within and across space which reinforce regimes of management to control things, bodies and borders (see, for example, Vigneswaran et al.

2010; Raeymaekers 2010).

The chapters in this collection importantly demonstrate what and who else one sees through using a wider and more inclusive analytical lens, which we have defined under the term displacement economies. This approach does not underestimate the concrete, lived realities and effects of forced dislocation or confinement on those subjected to such conditions: far from it. Nor does it dismiss the need for effective systems of assistance that address the immense scale and depth of disruption and suffering caused by all forms of enforced movement or enclosure. These situations of violent crisis and displacement are endemic in today’s world. On the African continent, as elsewhere, they result from wars and other forms of political violence; from agrarian land reforms, urban ‘renewal’ programmes and other forms of dispossession or forced resettle ment; from various combinations of manmade and natural environmental disasters, such as oil or chemical spills or nuclear fallout, or droughts, floods and famines; or from developmentenforced¹² or corporate

induced displacements such as megadam construction, mining operations or conservation.¹³The displacement economies approach or framework investi

gates such situations from an openended, multidimensional, multidisciplinary perspective that recognizes the profoundly relational qualities of displacement.

Defining a relational concept of displacement What, then, does this mean for a relational (rather than operational) definition of displacement? Among the contributors in this volume, there is no formally agreed upon, unified definition of displacement per se. However, there is a broad concurrence with the definition outlined below, which has evolved organically through my own empirical and conceptual encounters with displacement over many years¹⁴and which has been positively reinforced by engaging with the scholarship here and elsewhere.

I define displacement as enforced changes in interweaving spatial, social and symbolic conditions and relations. Each of the key words in this definition – en

forced, spatial, social, symbolic – is intended to act precisely as a metaphorical key to open up a series of reflections or questions. The notion of enforced, which even if obvious is not always fully analysed, necessarily leads one to ask openended yet relational questions about who and what has compelled changes, affecting whom and in what ways. It requires an analytic lens that

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reflects on relations and practices of power, sovereignty and authority in terms of both the capacities and legitimations underpinning modes of force and those precipitating or implementing them. In addition, it prompts one to examine and make visible both the positionalities and counteragency of those being compelled.

The spatial is a necessary but not isolated element of this process. Space in itself always matters (Massey 2005) and is always relational (see Evans but also Behrends, and Raeymaekers, this volume). In this regard, it matters in terms of attention to actual and symbolic locations or places, including those from which people are forced to move and those they move to. One needs to consider what such interconnected places/spaces mean in terms of the distances/proximities between them, what they respectively contain or promise with respect to resources, and how they are desired, occupied, used, controlled and reconstituted and by whom (Behrends, Elliott, Hansen, and Rodrigues, this volume). At the same time, not all displacement involves physical re

moval or forced movement away from a particular place. For some it may mean various forms of what Lubkemann (2008a) calls ‘involuntary immobility’.

This may entail being forced to remain behind, as in ‘displacementinplace’

(Magaramombe 2010; Jones, this volume); or forced confinement such as in the IDP camps in northern Uganda (Finnström 2008; Bøås and Bjørkhaug, this volume); or simply abandonment and having no means to move (Solidarity Peace Trust 2009; Lubkemann 2008b).

The relationship of a given group of people to a familiar place is always internally differentiated in complex and dynamic ways. Such differentiation and complexity necessarily change under conditions of crisis (Jones, Hammar, Bracking, this volume; but also Guyer 2002). This is even more the case when people are forced to move to a new place through violence and other kinds of disruption, loss and unpredictability. On the other hand, certain patterns may also persist and get replayed in new places (Raeymaekers, Evans, this volume). Such conditions of displacement profoundly affect individuals’ and groups’ social relationships to space and to one another in the very broadest senses, affecting physical, temporal, economic, political and cultural dynamics and sensibilities. This cannot be separated from their symbolic relationships to place, personhood and possibilities. Displacement may, for example, touch on and alter both personal and political senses and expressions of belonging, be this to a given social group (as defined by kin, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and so on), or to an actual locality, or to ‘the nation’. These will all have material as well as social consequences. Displacement may also precipitate a changed relationship to time: to the past, and even more so to the future, each affecting relationships with the present (Jones, this volume, and Vigh 2008).

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1 | Hammar Considering displacement economies in Africa

Displacement is neither a generically African experience or condition, nor only a contemporary one. It features everywhere and throughout historical eras. One may consider the transatlantic slave trade or colonial encounters globally as well as postcolonial conflicts for a start. With respect to the presentday, conservative global figures provided by the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate that there are close to forty million displaced people worldwide, notably referring to both IDPs and refugees. SubSaharan Africa (SSA) is consistently cited as the region most affected. Of the 10.4 million currently estimated ‘persons of concern’ to UNHCR globally, 28 per cent (around 2.9 million) are located in SSA, whereas out of an estimated 28.8 million IDPs worldwide, 10.4 million (again, close to 28 per cent) are in SSA, with the figure having increased by 7.5 per cent from the previous year.¹⁵Yet these figures represent only one source, and a certain mode, of ‘calculating’ a particular if primary dimension of displace

ment: namely its physical manifestations in terms of formally documented dislocated populations. As already noted, this is a very partial view of those actually displaced, or affected by displacement. The wider intention here, however, is to underscore the overall scale and significance of the combined phenomena, experiences and effects of displacement on and for the continent (Lubkemann 2010).

As has been argued already, displacement is not simply about the techno

cratic or political counting of those forcibly dislocated or confined and what needs to be done to assist, protect, manage, integrate, repatriate or resettle them. Nor is it only about the various longer and shorterterm causes of displacement, although these are a crucial aspect of the relational layers of an overall displacement context, as most chapters in this volume empha

size. Given the scale of physical, demographic and spatial disruption alone associated with specific displacement contexts, there is clearly a great deal being generated under such conditions of turbulence. The key concern here is especially with what displacement generates in terms of new economies and political economies, which remain remarkably understudied.

As Jacobsen and Landau (2003: 186), among others, have noted, ‘almost no economics research has been published in refugee studies’. A start has been made in some relevant directions (see HarrellBond 1986; Mazur 1989; Jacobsen 2002 and 2005 within a refugeecentric approach; but Hammar and Rodgers 2008 and Hammar et al. 2010 from a broader displacement perspective).¹⁶ However, the displacement economies approach explicitly aims to address this deficit. It raises questions, some of which have previously been flagged, about:

what new forms of commodification and value are produced; how both old and new resource regimes (such as those related to land, minerals, forests or even finance itself) are reordered; in what ways patterns of access, ownership,

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labour, production, distribution, exchange, accumulation and differentiation change or persist; and how such conditions affect the dynamic articulation between official or socalled ‘formal’ economies and alternative or ‘informal’

economies.

This focus does not assume a privileged place for displacement economies in the analysis of the changing social and material fabric of African lives and possibilities. It fully acknowledges that there are already many ‘telling chal

lenges’ that have long been confronting and reshaping Africa’s economies, which others continue to address (Verran 2007; Guyer 2004). The intensifica

tion of globalization, structural adjustment and liberalization, while fuelling pockets of wealth and elite accumulation, has arguably increased rather than decreased the continent’s marginalization within the global economy (Ferguson 2006). This has been exacerbated by burgeoning national debts linked partly to induced deregulation of economies and declining levels of production, but also to internal political crises and severe governance failures. Even so, some sectors are booming, such as mobile phones and minerals. The expanded extraction of lucrative natural resources alongside unequal resource access and distribution has generated new patterns of differentiation and deepening poverty at local levels, including new forms of personal debt and obligation. Linked to some of these more contemporary processes, although with much longer histories, are persistent as well as new violent conflicts across all regions of the continent, primarily within but also between countries. Compounding these trends are continuing high rates of HIV/AIDS. Yet in addition to and combined with all this, there is little doubt that displacement itself, in its multiple dimensions, is profoundly affecting African economies, as this volume begins to reveal.

Connecting economies of violence, uncertainty and displacement In a more general sense, there are various overlapping ways in which Africa’s ‘econ

omy’ has been portrayed (often in the singular): from assertions of ‘its’ historical and continued marginalization and ‘failure’ (Van de Walle 2001); to culturalist representations of a socially embedded ‘moral economy’ of different shades (Olivier de Sardan 1999), marked not least by pervasive neopatrimonialism (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Kelsall 2008); to images of a continent whose economic form and fate are largely defined by violence, war, chaos and criminalization (Bayart et al. 1999); to the recent more optimistic soundbites of ‘Africa rising’¹⁷ and its new value in the global economy linked especially to growth in (China

led) demands for natural resources and (more generally) for land for biofuel and food production (Cheru and Obi 2010). Whichever reading one adopts, either of ‘the’ economy or of diverse economies in Africa, it is reasonable to suggest that little systematic attention has been paid to the specific significance of displacement within and for economic domains at micro and macro levels.

This collection is an important contribution to the project of orienting

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1 | Hammar and sharpening the analytic gaze in this direction. However, it does so with the benefit of insights from other relevant bodies of scholarship related to what we might generically term here alternative economies. This refers to economies shaped in one way or another by conditions of crisis, violence or uncertainty, including displacement. Rich bodies of empirically grounded work have been produced by different sets of scholars in relation to what have been variously (and sometimes simultaneously) termed ‘war economies’

(Richards 1996; Keen 2000; Goodhand 2003; Cramer 2006; Raeymaekers 2010),

‘shadow economies’ (Nordstrom 2004, 2007; Schneider and Enste 2002; Brack

ing, this volume), ‘under ground economies’ (Venkatesh 2006; Smith 2002; Jones, this volume), ‘real economies’ (MacGaffey 1991; Roitman 2004), and even ‘state

less economies’ (Little 2003). These differ from yet resonate with an older and broader literature on ‘informal economies’ (Hart 2006; Meagher 2010) or

‘popular economies’ (Guyer 2002). While these latter may have evolved under less overtly violent conditions in general, they represent responses, over many decades, to chronic economic and political uncertainties (Vigh 2008) which continue to intensify in scale and complexity across the continent. Yet as Bracking (this volume) asserts, ‘traditional literature on the informal sector does not adequately explain informalization in the context of displacement economies wrought in crisis and violence’.

Without emphasizing any of these realms in particular, what I wish to highlight here is their collective influence on ways of revealing and analysing economic logics, systems, practices and practitioners that elude the categories of classic economic theory (Verran 2007). They provide us with alternative ways of asking questions and imagining answers about African economies in particular and political economies in general. Many of the studies in these respective fields aim to examine what lies ‘behind the surface’ of official façades or within messy, illicit entanglements. Yet even though such work often and importantly focuses on or exposes what is considered ‘illegal’ – such as illicit trade and smuggling, or formally unregulated markets – this is only one side of things. These economies do not preclude legal economic practices. At the same time, they also often exhibit highly routinized forms of organizing, albeit under less formal regimes of authority (Lindell 2008). Much as a growing scholarship on ‘real states’ in Africa is posing challenges to classic theories of the state (Hagmann and Péclard 2010; Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan forthcoming), this critical engagement with alternative economies – and their articulations with official economies – is challenging ‘conventional ideas about economy, politics and social order’ (Little 2003: 1) that have been ‘based on Western experience and institutions’ (Guyer 2004: 172, cited in Verran 2007:

164). At the same time, this kind of research is helping to make visible in concrete ways the empirical complexities and contingencies of African social, political and economic realities in times of crisis, violence and uncertainty.

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The following section provides an introduction to some of the elements that are beginning to characterize the emerging displacement economies approach.

The discussion draws extensively although not solely on the work brought together in this collection.

Elements of an approach: conceptual arenas and themes

The elements mapped below are intended to define and expand upon some of the working themes and conceptual parameters of a displacement economies approach. Given that economies in general are understood here in a socially related sense, not all these elements are explicitly or specifically ‘economic’, but all have implications for the ways economies work and might be understood.

Enforcement, movement, mobility Force is central to displacement, and clearly sets it apart from more voluntaristic notions such as migration, trans

nationalism or mobility more generally (De Bruijn et al. 2001). Yet this raises the challenge of defining what might be included under the term ‘force’. We need to consider what it may include in more subtle and invisible senses, beyond the most obvious and overt forms of physical violence or threats to life and survival of targeted ‘populations’ that compel flight or enclosure, be this from wars or state practices associated with removal, resettlement, repatriation or confinement. At the same time, who might be identified as responsible for and/or benefiting from such force? To what extent does one include economic or environmental violence where often causality or intentionality is harder to pinpoint directly? The notion of scale and duration of what and when counts as ‘force’ are at the core of defining the formal ‘status’ of different categories of displacees, both within humanitarian regimes and among sovereign states with regard to the terms under which people are provided with protection or not.

The approach taken here, while acknowledging the effects of such technocratic assessments, considers scale and degrees of intensity, and temporality itself, in more openended ways.

The displacement economies approach maintains a broad and inclusive understanding of force that allows for an open reading of situated empirical contexts, from which one might then generate theoretical insights about modes and patterns of compulsion and responses to it. The approach considers as significant psychological dimensions associated with force (such as fear or hopelessness) as much as direct or indirect political, economic, social, cultural or environmental factors which compel people to do what they would not otherwise have willingly chosen to do. But this does not imply a lack of agency among those on the receiving end of force. How people respond to enforcement in its various forms is, of course, an expression of their own agency, and a key con

sideration in the recognition and analysis of specific displacement economies.

The compelled movements – and/or immobility – that characterize displace

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1 | Hammar ment are of different kinds and durations, with highly diverse and relational effects on demographics, physical and social environments, and economies.

They have implications as well for social mobility or immobility (Hammar, Jones, this volume) as well as for the movement – or blockage – of material assets, including money (Bracking, this volume). What this points to is the importance of taking for granted neither flow nor fixity of either people or things when studying displacement. Nor should one assume anything predict

able about the direction or endpoint of enforced movement or its degree of permanence. Physical dislocation, for example, may occur many times, over time, from or between multiple sites. It may entail permanent or temporary relocation or resettlement, at closer or longer distances from places of origin, each context in turn having particular effects on social, political and economic realities. And it may include actual return – voluntary or otherwise – or at least the prospect of return (what I would call returnability), while in some cases return may never be an option.¹⁸ As the cases in this volume and elsewhere illustrate, the specificities of each context affect the conditions of possibility for lives and livelihoods, for patterns of inclusion and exclusion, and for loss and accumulation of those who are displaced as well as others related in various ways to their displacement.

Spatiality and agency To (re)state the obvious, movement in any direction, or in no direction (stuckness), is always necessarily spatial. It occurs in and through space and is often also specifically about space in terms of economic, political or social territorialization, the respatializing of bodies and belonging, and the changing uses or ‘repurposing’¹⁹ of space itself. The enforced changes in and of one’s spatial world in contexts of displacement inevitably alter actors’

relationships to old and new places in terms of the loss of former social and material grounding, and subsequent repositioning and struggle for recognition and new terms of belonging. Those actively dispossessed (who in some cases might remain physically ‘in place’), or physically dislocated, often lose not only physical place and property and the means of production or livelihood, but also a sense of their ‘proper’ place in the world (Jones, this volume; see also Roque 2008). At the same time there are others who gain materially or in terms of status and authority in each displacement context. This can be through replacing the displaced, or making use of the opportunities that, paradoxically, displacement generates, as many chapters here illustrate (see Behrends, Bracking, Evans, Hammar, Hansen).

Again, as the evidence in this volume demonstrates, these kinds of dynam

ics are at play whether displacement entails departures of different forms and duration (Behrends, Evans, Elliott, Hammar, Raeymakers, Rodrigues), or staying (Jones, Hammar), or direct confinement (Bøås and Bjørkhaug), or whether it includes various kinds of return (Evans, Hansen, Rodrigues) or combinations

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of these (Behrends, Evans). At the same time, enforced changes in relation to space/place and being in the world manifest and unfold in particular ways in different sociospatial locations. As such, it matters to some extent whether the displacement context is overtly or primarily rural (Bøås and Bjørkhaug, Evans), or urban (Hammar, Hansen, Jones, Rodrigues), or involves formal camps (Bøås and Bjørkhaug) or versions of selfsettlement (Behrends, Elliott, Evans, Raey makers).

It matters whether it includes border zones (Behrends, Evans, Raeymakers) or offshore ‘security jurisdictions’ and cyber space (Bracking). Each context in turn has its own combination of histories, resources, populations and polities that affect the parameters of the possible.

While taking loss and suffering seriously, the rather persistent stereotype of

‘the displaced’ as passive victims is far from accurate or helpful in excavating the many dimensions of what actually occurs within a displacement context, not least in terms of concrete and differentiated losses and gains. It is clear that even when subjected to and diminished by dislocating force, ‘one moves in not on space’²⁰ as an active agent, occupying and remaking space through the best use of available if highly circumscribed resources, networks and capacities.

Displacement contexts are constantly being remade through complex strategies and tactics of presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion. The possibilities are, however, far from infinite. As many of the chapters illustrate, they are constrained, as much as opened up, by the specific geographical, historical, social and politicaleconomic realities of each context.

Relationality, scale, temporality As stated, displacement contexts are multi dimensional and relational. First, they exhibit both causes and effects of displacement in multiple sites, and do so simultaneously and/or over time.

Secondly, displacement always has both localized and much larger scales of significance that are interconnected socially, economically and politically. In other words, displacement patterns within given historical and spatial con

junctures need to be analysed in relation to locally situated expressions, and memories, of often much older and larger processes, all of which are infused with complex power relations. Here one might consider the contemporary manifestations of historical dispossessions, dislocations and enclosures. Forced labour, colonialism, globalization and ‘development’, as well as various wars, all have had longlasting imprints on local, national and regional geographies and political economies (Arrighi et al. 2010).

Overlaying these historical processes are the effects of more recent (often violent) processes, such as postcolonial agrarian reforms (Alexander 2006;

Hammar, this volume) and increased transnational land deals or ‘grabbing’

(Makki and Geisler 2011). Also coming increasingly into play are ‘discoveries’

of concentrated natural resources and the expansion of both state and trans

national corporate extractive practices (Watts 2004; Rodrigues, this volume).

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1 | Hammar In some places linked to this are both new and sustained wars (Cramer 2006; Kaldor 2007 [1998]; and Behrends, Bøås and Bjørkhaug, Elliott, Evans, Raeymaekers, and Rodrigues, this volume). To some extent these situations have generated new patterns of both legal and illicit trade and investment (MacGaffey 1991; Roitman 2004; Nordstrom 2004; Elliott, Hansen, this vol

ume). Added to this mix are the effects of widescale urbanization, structural adjustment and informalization (Guyer 2002; Jones, this volume). With all this in mind, adopting a regional or international focus while keeping track of multisited national arenas is highly productive, even necessary, I would argue, for understanding displacement contexts and especially displacement economies (Hammar et al. 2010).

Similarly, displacement contexts and their economies need to be considered through a multitemporal lens. On the one hand, this means thinking of dis

placement as a series of processes (as opposed to simply events) that unfold over time and that may be replayed but also overlaid in different eras and of varying durations (Rodrigues, Evans, this volume). On the other hand, the notion of multiple temporalities here also refers to meanings and expectations of time and time horizons, which quite clearly change under conditions of dis

placement and sustained crisis, and affect the visions and directions that shape possibilities and choices (Guyer 2002; Jones, this volume). Especially when life and livelihood trajectories and hope more widely are radically curtailed, and when formerly more predictable trajectories alter radically, the ‘future’ takes on substantially different meanings (see especially Bøås and Bjørkhaug, Jones, Raeymaekers, this volume, and Bracking, this volume, more specifically on how this translates into financial savings and ‘futures’).

Disruption, disorder and differentiation Among its many effects, displace

ment disrupts and dislodges not only people but social orders, physical infra

structure, ecosystems, political and administrative systems, and economic relations and practices, while at the same time generating new ones on different terms. Displacement contexts – and the displacement economies they gen

erate or reflect – entail (and reveal) both continuities and reconfigurations of relationships between people, things, space and time. We know from our own and others’ research that in multiple sites and circumstances, displacement alters ‘patterns of power, exclusion, production, exchange, accumulation and transformation’ (Hammar and Rodgers 2008: 366). This differentially affects the full spectrum of actors who populate such contexts: those directly displaced as well as those abandoned or forced to remain behind; those who precipitate or perpetuate displacement, ‘legitimately’ or through ‘informal’ channels of violence; those who broker or benefit from displacement; those who host or in other ways accommodate the displaced; those who manage and often manipulate the sites and subjects of displacement.

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Within the various empirical communities of the displaced (or immobilized or confined), there is no fixed pattern or possible prediction as to who may retain or lose former positions of privilege, as extensive or marginal as these may have been. At the same time, preexisting hierarchies of power and pat

terns of vulnerability with respect to any particular socially differentiated group (be this in terms of class, race, gender, generation, ethnicity, religion and so on) are already part of a displacement context and are likely to be reinforced.

Yet sometimes the position of individuals or groups can shift, intentionally (as, for example, in Zimbabwe’s targeted land reforms) or not. Specific out

comes are a matter of empirical investigation. Across this collection we see examples from different settings of how generation (Jones, Raeymaekers), gender (Behrends, Bøås and Bjørkhaug, Elliott, Hansen) and class positions (Bracking, Evans, Hammar, Rodrigues) in particular – but sometimes also race, ethnicity, clan or kinship hierarchies – are challenged or reconstituted to varying degrees. In other cases, even simultaneously in the same setting, old patterns of social differentiation between but also within certain groups are reproduced or deepened, albeit under new and unfamiliar conditions. These emerging patterns, and the networks and alliances that form or break as a result, have implications for the ways in which economic opportunities open and close for different actors under conditions of displacement.

Displacement economies in practice

This section briefly presents the book’s chapters, each of which provides insights into the messy yet revealing realities of different displacement econ

omies in practice. They include cases from specific settings in most regions of the continent, and draw on theoretical and methodological approaches from diverse disciplines (anthropology, political economy, geography, political science, development studies). The research included in this volume was not selected on any comparative grounds. Rather, in its breadth of coverage it has been a way to introduce, evoke, illustrate and address, where possible, the kinds of key questions that underpin a displacement economies approach. In this sense, all the chapters are connected to each other by a number of common interests and concerns, even if treated differently. At the same time, certain kinds of issues appear more salient for some than others. Consequently, the chapters have been grouped into three analytically suggestive themes that highlight selected dimensions of displacement. This is not intended as a way of introducing any kind of typology of displacement economies by the back door (a rejection of typologies has already been pointed out). Instead, it illustrates the diversity and complexity of displacement contexts, while homing in on some of the key dynamics and conditions that generate particular displace

ment economies. The hope here is that more work in this general direction will be added to this early mapping of a growing field.

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1 | Hammar The three working themes, and respective authors, are: ‘Economies of rup

ture and repositioning’ (Behrends, Evans, Hammar); ‘Reshaping economic sectors, markets and investment’ (Rodrigues, Elliott, Hansen, Bracking); and

‘Confinement and economies of loss and hope’ (Bøås and Bjørkhaug, Jones, Raeymaekers).

Economies of rupture and repositioning Andrea Behrends situates us in the volatile displacement context of the Sudan (Darfur)–Chad borderlands. She provides insights into changing economic strategies and practices that have occurred here in more recent years but which are layered upon long histories of recurring violence, dislocation and chronic instability. War, displacement and rebellion have been an integral part of this border area for more than a century, with chance on the one hand, and dire necessity on the other, prompting yet circumscribing people’s survival ‘options’. Over time, such conditions have affected, among other things, the nature, location and longevity of markets and lines of trade; land access and labour conditions; and shifting patterns of accumulation. The years of recent conflict (2003–8) in Darfur have been particularly severe, in turn generating extraordinary scales of humanitarian aid.

This period has prompted new uncertainties and hardships as well as oppor

tunities on the Chadian side of the border for local residents and Sudanese camp refugees alike. Through biographical sketches linked to four different but interconnected sites in the area, Behrends reveals how, in turbulent times, different actors work the opportunities and limitations to survive the present and secure future livelihoods. This includes, for example, rural families dividing themselves between highly insecure rural villages and the relative safety of town so as to retain their land in the former and generate cash income for food and crucial supplies in the latter. We also see how the growth of the aid industry, while assisting many displacees, temporarily boosts and reshapes local economies. This in itself adds to the complexities – including new forms of violence and differentiation – of interweaving displacement economies in the area. Behrends’s cases, as do others in this volume, help illustrate the paradoxes of crisis and creativity in contexts of violence and displacement, and reinforce the need to ask who profits and who loses under such conditions.

Martin Evans focuses on a conflict and border zone in a quite different setting. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork on the border between Sen

egal’s Casamance area and northern districts of GuineaBissau, he considers the relationship between displacement, return and shifting economies in the context of West Africa’s longestrunning civil conflict. Following protracted dis

location over relatively short distances from Casamance into GuineaBissau in the 1990s, the 2000s saw an increasingly sustained dynamic of return to border areas within Casamance. This was driven by economic and social desperation among the displaced, improved security conditions at home, and the provision

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of international aid for reconstruction. However, return, like displacement, is characterized by complex dynamics. The reoccupation and exploitation by re

turnees of both living and cultivation spaces has had to accommodate ongoing security concerns (risks of attack, robbery and landmines), new and contested patterns of land tenure, an overgrown landscape, and wrecked infrastructure.

At the same time, returnees have increasingly focused on combining rural and urban livelihoods, aimed at minimizing economic and security risks. The reestablished physical presence as well as changed expectations of returnees after years away, together with other dynamics of social change linked partly to a younger local demographic, has further impacted on village life. In addition, the return process has contributed to the reconfiguration of political structures from subvillage up to regional level. In some cases, ambitious entrepreneurs have sought to take advantage of the opportunities provided by return (in

cluding uncertain land tenure regimes and access to international aid) not only to accumulate wealth but also to reshape political space in their favour.

Amanda Hammar engages with the paradoxes of class repositioning in post2000 Zimbabwe, an era marked by persistently dramatic displays of poli

tical and structural violence that generated both largescale dislocation and displacementinplace. She draws on various studies in Zimbabwe during the 2000s to reflect on the ways in which differentiation and new landscapes of inclusion and exclusion have unfolded in this context. These changes have included a radical reconfiguration of agrarian systems of settlement, tenure, labour, and land access and use, as well as other livelihood possibilities and practices. Similarly, in urban areas, hyperinflation and widescale business closures created mass unemployment, undermining the financial rewards and status of formal sector jobs. But even the mushrooming informal sector came under attack by the state and ruling party. Consequently, for both the working and middle classes, social mobility has been substantially interrupted and even for many reversed. Overall, new logics of accumulation and dispossession have emerged, intensifying the divide between a small elite and an impoverished and marginalized majority. For the latter, whether at home or in the ever

expanding diaspora, new ways have had to be found to reorient their modes of being in the world, with respect to their relationships to space and time, to belonging and citizenship, to money and things, to themselves and others.

While distinctions of race, gender, age and political loyalty are also important in this context, Hammar argues here that class provides a particularly useful lens for mapping the political economies and paradoxes of displacement.

Reshaping economic sectors, markets and investment Cristina Udels

mann Rodrigues examines the long history of multiple displacements and changing economic landscapes within Angola’s Lundas diamond provinces, from colonial times to the present. She traces several cycles and types of

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1 | Hammar enforced movement and confinement over time that began with labour be

ing brought forcibly to work in the mines during colonial corporate rule (up until 1975). This practice had ceased by the time of independence. However, the area was subsequently transformed by various kinds of displacement

induced demographic shifts after independence associated with Angola’s civil war (from 1975 to 2002), as well as by the adaptive strategies that were a response to such conditions. She identifies four main groups displaced (or confined) during this period: first, military personnel, both government troops and Unita guerrillas, forced to stay for long stretches in the Lundas, far from their places of origin; secondly, those fleeing from war who were compelled to move to safer places, a large majority moving to Luanda or other coastal cities, while others remained in governmentcontrolled Lundas cities; thirdly, those mineworkers and their families forced by the guerrillas to remain to work in the mines or as other forms of labour for the guerrillas; fourthly, those fleeing from war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), especially from 1998 to 2003. The end of the civil war brought further changes linked to territorial control and economic management of the diamond sector, including surveillance and control of informal mining activities, as well as more active urban administration and development. This chapter provides an important historical overview of the changing conditions, new or differently positioned actors, and alternative forms of economic activity and opportunity generated by war, displacement and then peace that have shaped Angola’s evolving diamond economy and local forms of urban settlement in the Lundas. It provides an important perspective on the longevity and interweaving layers over time of certain displacement economies.

Hannah Elliott explores the effects of various contexts of Somali displace

ment on the camel milk economy in Kenya. Forced migration from wartorn Somalia and pastoralist sedentarization in Kenya, together with urban oppor

tunities, have brought Somalis from diverse backgrounds across the Somali regions and the global diaspora to Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate, which is today strongly associated with the Somali community in Kenya. A vibrant trade in camel milk has accompanied Eastleigh’s rapid growth in response to new demand. The chapter seeks to elucidate the shifting relations of production, exchange and consumption behind the milk market’s boom by tracing camel milk’s ‘life history’ and trajectories in relation to the Eastleigh market. It finds that mass displacement from Somalia has in turn induced the transformation of the camel milk economy linked to the Kenyan Somali pastoralist communi

ties, who themselves have experienced dislocation through sedentarization and loss of economic opportunities. Camel milk trade has become a vehicle for social and economic integration for poor ‘expastoralist’ Kenyan Somali women and, increasingly, for refugee women from Somalia, in Nairobi. Commercial production of milk is a means through which Kenyan Somali pastoralists can

Displacement economies in Africa

Displacement economies in Africa

Paradoxes of crisis and creativity

edited by Amanda Hammar

Contents

Figure and tables

Introduction

1 | Displacement economies: paradoxes of crisis and creativity in Africa